


artistry

by Mothbats



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-20
Updated: 2019-03-20
Packaged: 2019-11-26 13:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18181394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mothbats/pseuds/Mothbats
Summary: Eli's love for Tretij Rebenok is painful and beautiful.





	artistry

**Author's Note:**

> Old work migrated in from tumblr. Originally written for Eli's birthday as a simple exercise, though this isn't what I would call... a happy birthday fic.... hmm.

Tretij Rebenok is not his real name. It isn’t a name at all but a title, a code, a watermark left on his person, obscuring his true self from the world. A little monster made of ash and despair, black with a smear of red, the color of blood on old cobblestones. The only colors of a life faded by hopelessness.

The world is monochrome behind this mask of his, a steady hiss of measured breath, oranges and yellows that make up a jungle of violence and endless hunger that gnaws at the minds and bellies of all who surround him. That, Tretij Rebenok can understand. These are realities of black and white, simple lives measured by simple desires. They are shapeless blurs on stretched-thin canvas, faceless creatures with their claws outstretched for the one who would look upon them and be ensnared in their Hell. In this, Tretij Rebenok finds he has little choice, colored and molded until he is no longer sure what he looked like before.

But the other boy is a bold streak in his mind when they meet. Tretij Rebenok breathes and he can taste pigments unknown on his tongue, looking at this other whose eyes are sharp, his fluid movements like the snake he’s named himself after. Deadly, bright and blinding, Tretij Rebenok almost believes that there is something more in this world again. For the first time since birth he finds he wants to see it, to touch it, to know the thoughts of this boy who is so deeply entrenched in the richness of a self-made war.

It makes Tretij Rebenok’s eyes water to imagine it.

Eli is the first to see Tretij Rebenok as he is in perhaps the whole of his life. Not a footnote in a paper, a file hidden away under rusted lock and key, but his own person: a painting that grows more colorful the longer Eli examines it. Like a master artisan, he pulls Tretij Rebenok to the forefront of his work, gives him shadow and depth, highlight that glows angelic. He is human again under Eli’s command - under Eli’s companionship.

But he finds his true color with Eli’s love.

Tretij Rebenok doesn’t know how his mask had been removed, so a part of him for so long that he had come to believe it as his own flesh. But Eli pries it away so easily, calloused fingers tender on pale skin, taking away the last of his defense and bathing him in light; removing the scab of an old wound and allowing the new growth beneath to breathe. Eli’s eyes, Tretij Rebenok notes, are the bluest thing he’s ever seen in his life - like the sky or the ocean, he supposes, not much room for focusing on it when he’s being pulled in, magnetic to the beautiful boy before him.

Eli kisses like he is blind to the chips in the marble, the frayed and burnt edges of Tretij Rebenok’s body - his hands paint the high mountains and low rivers, the rocky outcroppings and the copper fields. He makes a masterpiece of what should have been broken and cast aside, remaking the empath anew with every touch and press of his mouth. Tretij Rebenok burns with the new life that has been breathed into him and he is sure to give as good as he gets. Eli will never want for another sunset, another stormy sky, another battlefield while Tretij Rebenok is at his side.

And when Eli holds him and Tretij Rebenok is brave enough to give him his true name, it slides off his tongue in the dark, no more than a whisper of pastel on aged paper, a soft tint that gains a new hue each time Eli says it back. When he calls it, howls it, screams it in agony and ecstasy. This, Tretij Rebenok is sure, is the height of what life can be. The faded life of his mask has long been laid aside to gather dust in the recesses of his glorious gallery, forgotten.

But all too soon, the paint begins to run. The world they have built begins to break, shrines to their new life rotting at the cores and paintbrushes losing their bristles one at a time in the wake of their conflicts. Eli longs to return to a place Tretij Rebenok cannot follow - his world has always been tinted by his need for revenge, an unwinnable fight. At first, Tretij Rebenok had been content to pretend it made their lives brighter, a background to every scene. However, now all he can see is the way it twists and turns them, the artist tearing down his creations to achieve his ultimate goal, hands burdened with ash and blood as he walks on the bent and broken corpses of his achievements.

All his beauty gone… except one.

But Tretij Rebenok cannot be changed; Eli had borne his Galatea unto the world, but he could not force it into his servitude like the others. Tretij Rebenok is an otherworldly creature who has begun to walk his divergent path, tears in his eyes when he sees the end come for them. Eli does not abide by begging, and their final kiss tastes too bitter, full of want and things left unsaid. Colorless and empty.

Alone, Tretij Rebenok turns his old mask over in his paper-thin hands, trembling as he raises it to his face. The scent of leather and plastic has never been a comfort, and he chokes on the dust as the world beyond closes off into darkness: the age of the artist has ended.

Tears fog the glass and turn the monochrome into a faded watercolor, cloaked in silence and loneliness, to begin again.


End file.
